How I Wrote a 35-Word Pitch

My cheap-o self-made cover

I follow a pair of blogs that have both recently hosted 35 word pitch contests (YAtopia and Brenda Drake Writes). I entered both contests with different works and got requests on both, and perhaps the most useful facet of the contest was learning to whittle my pitch down to the most important aspects of the story. Doing that forced me not only to think critically about the writing itself, but also find the moment in my story that defines the main character's critical choice.

A side-effect of focusing the conflict was that I realized, for my novel-length work, that the story needs to shift closer to the end, putting that moment of critical choice dead-center, with the inciting event of the story nearer to the one-quarter mark.


Crystallizing an entire novel is hard, because you need character, motivation, setting, conflict, stakes, and voice. In this post, I'm going to show you how I got my pitch for The Mark of Flight down to 35 words.



The blurb that follows is what I've used in my query letter, and what you'll find on the Mark of Flight page above.

The council’s preference for her tractable cousin is Princess Arianna’s biggest worry until her most trusted companion, Markmaster Tashda, kidnaps her to rekindle the centuries-long war with the neighboring kingdom, Centoren. In a fight for her liberty and the preservation of her homeland, Arianna is willing to sacrifice almost anything, but she can't escape an elite squadron of Centoreinian soldiers on her own.

A backwoods Mage and a stuttering stable boy, however, are the last champions she would have asked for. Bay is an Innate Mage who can escape neither the impulse to heal the ravaged borderlands nor the haunting absence of the master who taught him more Magic than anyone else seems to know. Even worse is Shiro, a slave illegally owned by the same inn harboring Tashda’s men. Horrified at the thought of slavery in her kingdom, Arianna swears to stop the unlawful trade if she can ever get home, and promises Shiro will never suffer chains again. Then one of Tashda’s men catches up to them, and the glittering shield that bursts from Shiro’s hand shocks even him with the impossible: the slave is a Markmaster.

Bay departs to lead Tashda astray and Shiro, unable to explain how he got a Mark, refuses to accept his power. Arianna hopes that returning to the castle will solve their problems, but when Shiro is captured protecting her from slave-traders, she faces a choice: break her promise to Shiro and rush home to prepare her kingdom for war, or risk her life to free the Markmaster-slave who gave up everything to save her.

Kind of long, right? At 263 words, this blurb is pushing it even for a query letter. However, we can see all the elements of story I listed above.

Character: Princess Arianna


Motivation: liberty and preservation of her homeland


Setting: Rizellen (which, by the fact that she's a princess, we can assume is both feudal and medieval)


Conflict: she has to choose between warning her homeland of approaching war and breaking her promise to Shiro


Stakes: war for her kingdom if she fails to warn them, and life as a slave for Shiro if she fails to rescue him. On both ends, her personal failure to protect what she cares about is evident.


Voice: words like "suffer" "rush" "backwoods" "champion" "ravaged" and "rekindle" hint at the diction of a high fantasy.

The first step was to identify the moment that encapsulates my character's most pivotal choice--the moment she gets off her lazy arse and makes the decision to start DOING something about the situation I stuck her in. For THE MARK OF FLIGHT, that was the moment where Arianna makes her choice between going home to warn her country about Tashda's plans, or rescuing Shiro from slave-traders.

With that in mind, I yanked the final lines from my blurb:

when Shiro is captured protecting her from slave-traders, she faces a choice: break her promise to Shiro and rush home to prepare her kingdom for war, or risk her life to free the Markmaster-slave who gave up everything to save her

By itself, that line is 41 words - already over my limit - so I needed to trim down. Shiro being captured by slave-traders can sort of be implied in the last line: "free the Markmaster-slave". It's probably not necessary to know that he needs to be freed from slavery for a second time. So I end up with this:

(Arianna) faces a choice: break her promise to Shiro and rush home to prepare her kingdom for war, or risk her life to free the Markmaster-slave who gave up everything to save her

Now we're talking. At 33 words, I was finally under the limit. But it wasn't ready yet. I knew I'd have to introduce the main character, the setting, and the general predicament she's in before that choice would matter to anyone.

So we would obviously need to know Arianna's name, the fact that she's a princess, and the fact that she's been kidnapped; "Kidnapped Princess Arianna" covers that in three words, but doesn't really set up the action well. So I decided to use the inciting incident (her kidnapping) as a springboard. "When Princess Arianna of Rizellen is kidnapped..."

But then what? What happens? What are the stakes of that? Easy: war. I loved the word "rekindle" from the original query, so I changed it around a bit to show the stakes of the original situation: "When Princess Arianna's kidnapping threatens to rekindle war..."

Now her choice is properly set up, so I trimmed down the verbage at the end and came up with:

When Princess Arianna’s kidnapping threatens to rekindle war, she must choose between warning her kingdom of the enemy’s approach or risking her life to help the slave who gave his freedom to rescue her.

34 words! Awesome. But I still wasn't done yet.


If beta readers are critical for your book, they're even more critical for your query, and even more important for your pitch. You want to present it to them and see what works, what's understandable, what isn't understandable, and what might be confusing. Also, beta readers will be able to give you quick tips on things like diction and voice.

I copied my pitch and pasted it into my status on facebook, and asked my friends to critique it.

The first thing to go was the "must choose between ...ing and ...ing". That construction was weak, and got replaced with "must choose: warn ...risk..."

When Princess Arianna’s kidnapping threatens to rekindlewar, she must make a choice: warn her kingdom of the enemy’s approach or riskher life to help the slave who gave his freedom to rescue her.

Exactly 35 words, and much stronger. Then another friend suggested I use  the word "sacrifice" instead of "gave", which is a much better word-choice, and I decided I liked "faces a difficult choice" better than "must make a choice". In the end, I came up with:

When Princess Arianna's kidnapping threatens to rekindle war, she faces a difficult choice: warn her kingdom of the enemy's approach or risk her life to help the slave who sacrificed his freedom to rescue her.

Yeah, it leaves out a lot. It leaves out Bay entirely, leaves out the promise Arianna made, leaves out the fact that Shiro is secretly a Markmaster (and what that is). But here's the thing: those are details. Those are trappings of the world. They're not necessary in a pitch, which is designed to present the most interesting part of the story to the potential agents.

POST YOUR 35-WORD PITCHES BELOW!

Do you have a pitch for your story? Have you participated in any pitch contests? Do you think you could whittle down your pitch to 35 words?

Writing Openings - Learning from The Hunger Games Model

Picture from hungergamesdwtc.net

Openings are tough. For me, they're one of the hardest things to get right. The balance of exposition and action, character introduction and identification, has always been something that takes me much longer than it probably should.

What everyone tells you to do in openings:

1. Show what the main character cares about.

2. Threaten what the main character cares about.

There are a billion and eleven ways to accomplish those two things, and however basic they may seem, they're still hard to do. It's the how, not the what, that's a little tricky to me.

At the most recent meeting of my writing club, Raven brought up a point our friend Ed (of IGMS and Magical Words) had made on a panel at ConCarolinas: The Hunger Games has an impressively succinct opening.

Think about it; within the first pages we learn how deeply Katniss cares about her sister, Prim. Not only does she break the law to feed her family, but she also tolerates her little sister's cat, which she hates. Despite the cat being another mouth to feed, Katniss lets it stay because Prim loves it, which shows how deeply Katniss cares about Prim. That's all within the first two or so pages. This caring perfectly sets up the story's inciting incident: Prim getting chosen to compete in the Hunger Games, and Katniss taking her place.

Openings don't come naturally to me, and I tend to take a while to ramp up into the story, action or not. In conjunction with this observation, two of my beta readers for HELLHOUND, Bryan Lincoln and Darci Cole, made a couple of points that had me rethinking that opening. I knew I needed to make it succinct and precise, like the Hunger Games, and to do that I had to think critically about the opening. I came up with the following method for accomplishing the two elements of the opening:

The Hunger Games Model

1. Demonstrate what the main character cares about by showing them overcoming some obstacle/hardship or another because he/she cares about it. (Motivation in evidence!)

2. Threaten the thing that character cares about in such a way that forces him/her to take the first step along the story's course.

I know, I know. Reading it written out like that makes me sort of go, "Duh. Of course that's how an opening should be done." But it has taken several failures and some strict, sit-down-and-analyze time for me to figure out not only what needed to happen, but how to do that.

I came up with exactly how to harvest these elements from HELLHOUND and weave them together in a scene that is similar to what I already had, but will likely work much better.

Does your story's opening follow the Hunger Games Model? How? What other ways have you seen or utilized to open a story?

Tabletop Magic for Your Novel

Picture courtesy mmorpg-info.com

This past week, I've been worldbuilding for Beggar's Twin. One thing I never really did with my other two books was sit down and hammer out details of how the Magic works before I wrote the story. I ended up regretting that during every stage of the process - I didn't know how to describe it while I wrote my rough drafts, and it affected the plots during revision and made them take longer. Sure, I eventually got all the pieces figured out, but it slowed me down.

Beggar's Twin has a very complicated magic system - more complicated than any I've written thus far. Not only are there a number of different branches of magic, the casting style is singing-based, which creates a whole new set of issues. I knew I was going to have to do a bit more planning here in order to keep everything straight, so I sat down with my friend Eric (an avid tabletop gamer who paid a lot more attention to the rulebooks than I ever did) and hammered out some rules for the magic system as if it were a tabletop RPG.

Here's how we got started:

Background

First, I described to him the basic construction of the magic system. I'd like to point out that I already had the basics in mind. The following diagram is the division of magic: what type of magic it is, what effects it has, how it's categorized, who can have it, how many branches can they have. This is all information you need to know before you begin.

A few points of pertinent background information (and the notes and ideas they spawned) are as follows:

1. Each branch of magic resonates with a particular key. There are six branches of magic, and there doesn't appear to be a rhyme or reason for the particular key it's associated with. (There are probably professors at the University who devote their lives to finding significance in these keys, but in terms of the story, nobody knows.)

2. Sound is vibration, but not just any sound can be used for spellcasting - it has to be voice. However, I decided that outside sounds would certainly disturb the spellcasting, because of interference. (You know what that means for historical warfare? WAR GONGS.)

3. Given the above, Professors at the University will have something akin to giant tuning forks in a dissonant key to their area of teaching, so they can disrupt any student spells likely to go awry. All Magicsingers carry small ones to act as a pitch-pipe before singing.


After establishing the background information, Eric and I decided to work with the D20 system, since it's what I'm most familiar with. 


If this were to be a real tabletop game, I would probably spend ages and ages coming up with a whole bunch of spells for each branch of magic, plus a couple of spells that could be done with particular combinations like esper/divintion telepathy. This, however, is not something I'm concerned with working out before I write, so I'm skipping that part (for now).


Next, we started coming up with what's know in tabletop gaming as "Feats".

In the d20 System, a feat is one type of ability a character may gain through level progression. Feats are different from skills in that characters can vary in competency with skills, while feats typically provide set bonuses to or new ways to use existing abilities.

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/feat#ixzz1xb4Cx7SP

Feats are all those special little quirks that make your unique magic system even cooler. In terms of narrative, they're what will help you show off your magic system in plot and interaction. Flaws are similar to feats, but hinder the character. Here are a few of mine:

Perfect Pitch: (this feat can only be taken at character creation) Your character will never have problems with pitch. +5 on all casting checks.


Resonance: (this feat can only be taken at character creation) Resonance occurs when the spirit is in perfect resonance with one branch of magic, allowing that person the ability to become more proficient in that magic quickly. It also cancels dissonance penalties for the target branch.

Dissonance: (this feat can only be taken at character creation) Dissonance occurs when the spirit is in a dissonant key to a particular branch of magic. Non spellcasters may take this feat without penalty and receive a +20 to Armor Class against the target magic. Spellcasters may use this as a flaw.

Focus: (GM awards this feat at any time) When a character has devoted significant academic study to his or her singing, they may be awarded focus, which allows the caster to subtract five points off all casting checks.


Tone Deaf: When a character is tone-deaf, he or she will have significant difficulty casting spells. No one likes to sit next to this character in class. -5 on all casting checks. -10 if another character is singing a spell in a different key.

Beautiful Voice: Teachers always say it doesn't matter how good your voice is, as long as you can sing on key...but spells always seem more effective when cast in a lovely voice. Teachers are also more likely to favor students whose voices don't inspire dogs to howl. +1 on all "damage" rolls.


Obivously, there's a lot more that goes into creating a tabletop game than just background, spells, and feats. This is, however, a really good start.


Do you play tabletop games? If your magic system were a tabletop game, what feats and flaws would you have? How would you use them in your story?

Crossing the Fail Road

Last week was a bad week. Some good things happened--Raven and I went to see Wicked with tickets she won at the charity event we both attended earlier this year, and on Wednesday, we hung out with our friend Andrew, who was in town for a book signing (A.J. Hartley, Darwen Arkwright and the Peregrine Pact).

But it was a bad week. Like most bad weeks, it wasn't the product of One Big Thing, but a stew of disappointments, stress, and bad-timing. It left me feeling pretty low, and Friday I finally let it all simmer over as I sat in my car in the parking lot of my local coffee shop, crying, wondering why I was even bothering.

I'm writing this now not because I want encouragement. I'm actually feeling pretty good today. I'm writing this because I'm now on the other side of that feeling, and I wanted to address it.

I reached out for support that day--on Facebook, which is not always the best of forums, but served me well. I didn't want compliments or reassurances, since I have a hard time believing those when I'm in the best of moods, let alone the worst. But I got encouragement. I got support. I got sympathy from others who had been in my shoes. I got the love of my friends.

It's times like that, when the future is uncertain and we realize there's nothing we can do to keep the world from spinning on, that it's good to know we're not alone.

I composed myself, got out of my car, and walked into the coffee-shop. I sat down with my drink, opened my laptop, and pulled up a story.

I started writing.

If there's one thing I've learned about writing, it's this: when I feel bad about my writing, when I feel like I'm never going to get published, or I'm never going to be good enough, or this book that I bled my heart out for is never going to see print, there's  nothing that will make me feel better as quickly as getting back to writing.

When the tsunami hit Japan last March, I wished more than anything that I could be back there, in the country that had been my home for three years, doing something. I felt the need to take all the feelings boiling up inside me and turn them into energy, into action, to do something to get that healing-train moving. I couldn't go to Japan, obviously. I would just be a drain on its much-needed resources. There is no feeling quite so terrible as helplessness.

Back then, I turned to the local university and Japanese community to help in the fund-raising efforts. I performed at a benefit concert, and worked together with my friends to get Adryn home for a few weeks, and out of the upheaval of Japan's post-tsunami climate.

It's doing something, effecting a change in my situation, that makes me feel better when I'm down. So when I feel bad about writing, I write.

This weekend, it really helped. I got another whole scene written on BULLRUSHING THE GHOST, and the story is turning out much more touching than I'd anticipated. It was supposed to be a comedy, but it's now also somewhat romantic.

I'm also blessed with wonderful friends, who push me to be better, who support me without babying me, and who understand that I don't want to be told how great I am when only improving my weaknesses will make me feel better...but still find ways to encourage me despite myself.

Specific Motivation for Characters

You may be surprised at the changes...

While doing the outlining workshop, a few of the folks tried to pass off "to be happy" as a character motivation. Sorry, folks - no dice.

It's not that "to be happy" isn't a motivation, but it's sort of the quintessential motivation, and that's the problem. When you're setting up what your character wants, it needs to be as specific as possible, because that specificity will help your character seem unique.

"To be happy" is not unique. Just like we can trace all life back to the sun (well, as far as I know), everyone is motivated by the pursuit of happiness. Does your villain want to destroy the world? Why? Because on some level, world-destruction makes that character happy, or at least satisfied.

And satisfied is like happy. For sociopaths.

Anyway.

Motivation needs to be specific, and if it's not, all the cool shit they can do doesn't matter, because we don't know why it's important. A while back, I saw a youtube video about how Disney princesses always have their "motivation establishing song." I can't find that video now, but here are some of the relevant songs:

Belle: I want adventure in the great wide somewhere...

Ariel: I want to be where the people are...

Mulan: When will my reflection show who I am inside...

Snow White: Someday my prince will come...(barf.)

Ignoring the gag-inducing passivity of the Snow White motivation (If you haven't read the "YA Cover Trends" [aka, Dead Girls on Covers] essays over on Rachel Stark's blog, Trac Changes, I command thee go read.)  you can see that all four of these chicks at least know what they want, and we learn that before they have to start fighting to make it happen or, in Snow White's case, before she is rudely taken advantage of by her step mother, and then randomly sexually assaulted by some chump with a white horse and a crown, and then circumstances allow everyone else to make her dream happen.

But how does one go about figuring out a specific motivation for a character?

The way I've decided to define specific motivation is by breaking it down into two parts:

DESIRE + METHOD

Desire is whatever it is your character wants. This should be the thing that pulls them toward the ending, the thing that they want to fight for. For example, the two main characters of HELLHOUND:

Helena: to gain true freedom and peace for herself and her pack.

Jaesung: to take care of the people he cares about (the way his father didn't).

Method is the course of action your character plans, must, or eventually decides to take in order to achieve their goals. To know this, you must know first what is keeping them from achieving their desires. Again, I'm going to use the cast of HELLHOUND as an example.

What stands between desire and:

Helena: Gwydhain is hunting the Hellhounds, the Sorcerers Guild is hunting her, and Jaesung's attention/suspicion puts her in danger of revealing her secret. 

Jaesung: Helena won't tell him what's going on, so he can't protect her from it. He's still in school and doesn't make enough money yet to help resolve his father's debt.

So, what's their course of action, given these obstacles?

Helena: protect the book with the Hellhound creation spell, learn enough magic to defeat Gwydhain, keep her autonomy from the Sorcerers Guild, and keep her true nature hidden from her roommates. 

Jaesung: find out what's going on with Helena so he can support her...and to make sure she's not endangering anyone else he cares about; finish his degree in applied mathematics and get a good job so he can take care of his family financially.

From these pieces of information, we can decide what each character's specific motivation is. For now, I'm just going to pick the most important obstacle.

THIS IS WHAT IT SHOULD LOOK LIKE

Helena: wants to gain true freedom and peace for herself and her pack BY protecting the book with the Hellhound creation spell and learning enough Magic to defeat Gwydhain. 

Jaesung: wants to take care of the people he cares about (the way his father didn't) BY finding out what's going on with Helena so he can support her, or at least make sure she's not endangering anyone else.

CHARACTER wants to achieve DESIRE by taking a COURSE OF ACTION.

I don't think your characters' initial courses of action need to be successful - Helena fails both to protect the book and to learn enough Magic to defeat Gwydhain, and so must come up with an alternate solution. I'm not going to tell you if Jaesung is successful or not. You'll just have to wait and see...

What is your main character's specific motivation? Is their initial course of action successful? What's their next course of action?

Why Flaws and Motivations Matter More

What's that? I can't hear you over my AWESOME!

Have you ever created a character so sublimely kickass you can't believe they somehow rocketed straight from your subconscious?

He's a white-haired elf who doesn't realize he's a half-demon, and comes back to save the undeserving village that ran him off, only to die a slow and painful death (with an epic death-speech that would make Mercutio weep in a fit of jealous awe) to teach us all a lesson in tolerance. Speaking of tolerance, he's gay! With a demon. Isn't he awesome?

No. He's not. Maybe the above description intrigues you, and that's not a bad thing. Most likely, you're rolling your eyes. How do I know? Because I haven't given you a reason to care. It isn't that there's anything wrong with being a soliloquizing half-elf-half-demon still fighting to protect the ones that would have him killed (and getting some action on the side), but as it stands he's boring.

Here's the deal: anyone can heap awesome skills and powers onto a character. Anyone can throw a sad back-story and a tragic ending at a character. Anyone can give their character a controversial trait. (May I add, here, that making a character gay is not a quirk, flaw, or free-pass on making your character unique?) I can't embolden, underline, italicize, and capitalize the following enough: NONE OF THIS MATTERS WITHOUT FLAWS OR MOTIVATION.

Stories aren't about how awesome a character is. It's about the problems--internal and external--those characters overcome, and why they overcome them. Sure, how they overcome those problems is an important aspect of the plot, but it's in the "why" that we readers find a reason to care.

Looking for even more tips on writing? Go check out freelance editor CA Marshall's blog for her special Editing Advent contest - you could win a free 10 page critique from someone who knows what she's talking about.

Guest Post: The Best Way to Write a Trans Character

Around the YA Literary blogosphere, the current buzz is all about YA Authors being asked to straighten gay characters. Publisher's Weekly published an article by two Young Adult authors who, without naming names, revealed that they had been asked (and not just once) to remove a gay character's viewpoint, or at least all reference to his sexuality. Well, the agent stepped forward with a totally different story...You can read about the whole mess here and form your own opinion.


The positive thing about the whole mess is that it started a dialog about LGBTQ characters in fiction with all the right people. Just after responses to this started cropping up, I was hanging out with my friend Morgan--a transsexual woman--and asked her not just what she thought about the notion of "straightwashing" fiction, but of the treatment by authors, agents, editors, etc of LGBTQ (which she refers to under the umbrella-term "trans") characters in general. Also a writer, Morgan agreed to share her thoughts on the matter in a guest post.

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The Best Way To Write A Trans Character

Morgan can be found HERE and HERE

There isn't one.

Gosh, that sounded disappointing. Let me give specificity a whirl, for giggles. There's a lot of discourse (not to mention monocourse and meta soliloquies, when no one is around) going on about how to tackle LGBT characters in fiction. Some say burn any hopes of it, because there's that background radiation of fear that says “bigoted people will use words like 'decency' as a beating stick against me.” Some caution against the flip side, where you slap in FABULOUS characters sitcom-style willy, even nilly, out of a desire to be topically hip. Or hiply topical, it's hard to keep up (or is it down?). Some say your characters should be out and proud. Some say it should be so subtle it's barely there.

This Some person sure gabs, don't they? But I've been massaging my little lesbian transsexual noodle to conjure an answer, and I don't think there is one. We're still at the 1939 stage of the next great lexicon war as we try to excise terms like hermaphrodite, tranny and transvestite. It's still news worthy when a trans character is in a television show, even moreso when they're actually played by a trans person. I would argue that it's too soon for there to be a right way. Every form of media follows its own set of rules, and almost every form of media is transgender-free, or at least trans-lite, which may be low fat but it means the knowledge fat per serving goes with it.

For instance, take trans memoir “Conundrum” by British travel writer Jan Morris. It was written in the 70's when, if you thought bloody no one was trans now, there was practically negative trans mass in the universe in that dark, bygone era. (Can you tell I'm young and cocksure? Vaginasure?) There being a dearth of edumication about L, G, B and T during her personal coming out, Jan writes her story through the lens of a spiritual rebirth rather than through the more recent socio-medical view. So instead of a story about drawing strength from a community, it's more of a story about trusting yourself even when you're a solitary anomaly. It's a radical approach time-locked to that era, and a microcosm of a community that often prefers to stay hidden.

Because a truly globally connected trans community is something only recently realized, “Conundrum” is part of a heritage of stories on gender defiance. After all, transgender isn't just transsexuals, who pursue “transition” through medical or surgical means. There's bigender and trigender, who by choice spend part of their life as a male, another as female, perhaps still another as androgynous or even as a wholly separate personality. There are crossdressers (formerly known as transvestites) who change their dress and behavior for a certain degree of emotional or sexual satisfaction, while still retaining their assigned gender's identity. There are genderqueer people who blend or cast off the window dress (and duds) of both sides of the divide but don't identify either way.

Take the Japanese animation (anime) fairy tale mind screw series, Revolutionary Girl Utena. It's about the titular Utena who longs to become a prince so she can save the princess. She wears an outfit akin to the other males in the series, she kisses the princess to release the Sword of Dios, and she's weakened into a state of submission later in the series when she forces herself to adopt "feminine" traits and roles. Is she trans? Who knows? We didn't have that precise a language back then, so there's no convenient labeling to pin. All we can say is that the show built a foundation on the corpses of subverted gender norms. We can't say that she was male-identified because that hyphenated word didn't really exist, but we can say that the series revolved around a relationship between two women with opposing social roles. And opposing shades of purple hair.

Now look at the “Sofia Lopez” episodes of Nip/Tuck season one. Here we have a transsexual character seeking surgery, and her doctor, Sean (one of the show's leads), coming to grips with his discomfort, and disgust, with people who change genders. Not that Sean has a moral leg to stand on, since he fed the literal legs Silvio stood on to an alligator three episodes before. But in a sympathetic way he releases the bonds of old guard masculinity and comes to terms with his judgmental nature, and by turn the audience learns a little more about what it means to be trans.

Color bomb pretty and fascinatingly cynical show Paradise Kiss ends with lead guy George leaving the lead gal, George's final scene showing him on a boat alongside none other than his trans best friendgirl. It's platonic love that's in the air, as the show suggests that he needs a partner in crime more than a star-crossed love. While this Casablanca-esque ending doesn't teach you much about being trans, it never has transphobic sentiments, either, instead syncing its tone to the character's. She doesn't dwell on it, and the show leaves her alone about it.

Now “Sex Changes,” by the Dresden Dolls off their album Yes, Virginia.... The song can be read as a cautionary tale about your first sexual experience (“sex changes you”), a condemnation of people who change their sex, or the exact opposite: a condemnation of the way people talk about trans people as victims of a sickness. That said, it's a razor line to walk and should only be performed by professionally calloused razor walking feet.

Finally, the American version of Ugly Betty. The first soapy season involves a trans character who is played both as evil and ethical, as shock value and as a nuanced human being. Halfway through the season she announces she's a main character's supposedly dead brother whose come back from beyond the grave to exact corporate revenge. And in the same breath, admits to faking her death just so she could transition without the scrutiny of her family and peers. She has sex at one point in the series, and it's built up as this “ooh, how different” thing, and yet she and her lover never address it. They just admire each other's beauty and don't sweat what sex with her could be viewed as. Instead they sweat the regular, prescribed amount of sex sweat.

Quiz time: which one of those was the right way to write a trans character?

All of them. The thing is, there's no right way at the moment. Any interpretation is going to cheese someone off, because the community is made of a million pie slices of various thicknesses and crust integrity. Now this may be a scary prospect, because who wants to land on the wrong side of a civil rights issue, now or in the retrospect of history? Safer to just pretend trans people don't exist, because that makes everyone happy. But the thing is, for there to be a standard, there has to be a model. Everyone of you who has even imagined writing a trans character are forging that foot path, here and now. Any interpretation not born out of judgment is going to fit one of those models above, or millions of potential others, because the big secret is out. Trans people are as varied, diverse, strange, good, bad, beautiful, manic, womanic, wild and firework-laced as everyone else.

Further Reading: Writing Gay Characters, The Top 25 Gay TV Characters, Writing a Trans Character
(Edit: 6/18/2012): Check out Zoe E. Whitten's post on the topic here: On Writing Trans Characters and YA Fiction.

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You can find more of Morgan's writing at: TRANSLABRYNTH

And her YouTube Channel: Translabrynth on YouTube

Procrastination

Procrastination just seems so much more efficient when you have a British accent.

Charlie brings up a good point when he said creating videos for YouTube used to be what he did to avoid his real job, but now that making YouTube videos is his job, making videos has become the thing he avoids rather than the method of avoidance. That's generally true for me when I'm faced with "having to do" something, even if it's something I usually like doing. I love reading, but it was hard to make myself do assigned reading. While I was unemployed, I decided to try writing as if I were a full-time writer, but had neither the pressure of a time-constraint nor the accountability to help facilitate the process. I was suddenly faced with a seemingly-interminable span of time in which to complete something, so it was really easy to put it off for another hour while I "woke up more" or "caught up on email".

I'm ADD, and so the "I should take a nap - ooh, a chocolate-chip cookie!" part of my brain is pretty loud and tireless. To make matters worse, a lot of my methods of procrastination is masquerading as productivity, like Charlie's taxes.

Procrastination-Methods Masquerading as Productive [PMMP...that's a horrible acronym]

Sleep in late, even when I've had plenty of sleep

Make tea or coffee.

"Research" (camels, eco-systems in tide-pools, windmills, wheelbarrows, irrigation, slate quarries) for details that amount to less than a sentence or two the text.

(From Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh)

Procrastination Methods that Ain't Even Trying [PMAET]

Sims3

Dr. Who (and other TV Shows)
Facebook (the whole thing)
Stumble Upon
Watching DIY Videos...without the whole DI part.

Charlie explained the biological reason we procrastinate, which actually helped me to understand something about the relationship between work and satisfaction when you're writing a novel. The satisfaction of completing a novel or a novel revision is enormous, but there's a ton of work that goes into reaching that one big goal. If we as writers allow ourselves to think only of the satisfaction (or validation) we will feel when the entire thing is finished, the limbic system is going to win out pretty easily with "Hey, don't you want to go feed your virtual cows?"

I suppose this is why some writers set daily word-goals - to make the satisfaction more immediate. Unfortunately, that usually caused me to stop writing once I reached that word-count, no matter where I was in the scene, so the satisfaction wasn't as high as when I completed a scene. The satisfaction of finishing a scene is enough to drive me past the point of procrastination. Of course, I may reward myself with an episode or two of Dr. Who before I move on...but that's a "natural break" in my productivity.

Because I'm ADD, removing distractions rarely works for me, since I'll just make new ones of my own. One brilliant thing about having a deficit of attention is that you can always find something new to do. If I'm at home, I tend to choose whatever will provide me with the most satisfaction at that moment. Sometimes that's writing, sometimes it's cooking or watching Veronica Mars or making throw-pillows for my new apartment or looking for pictures of steampunk wedding cakes, even though I don't even have a boyfriend...

Which is why I tend not to write at home. Certain rooms are primed for certain kinds of behavior, and when I'm in those rooms, I have a harder time resisting Neil Patrick Harris's dulcet tones.

If I'm in public, surrounded by people, I'm less likely to let myself get distracted because I know that people could be watching. I don't usually think they are, but they could be, which gives me a pretty good reason not to sit in Starbucks with my headphones in, squealing over Bradley James in full-plate armor.

What are your favorite ways to procrastinate? How can you make writing more satisfying in short-term ways? What other methods have you found to beat distraction?

Magical Motivation

It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of the Magical Words blog. I've been following them since last winter, ever since I decided to get "serious" about my own blogging. Their blog posts (and comments, and responses to comments) provide an endless source of "aha!" moments and motivation for me. I was even lucky enough to meet a number of them at StellarCon this year, and the lovely (and awesomely bedecked in cool jewelry) Faith Hunter shuffled a copy of their book Magical Words: A Writer's Companion into my hand for review.

Wait, what? You don't know Magical Words? Well, then allow me to introduce the main characters of this blog post:

(click for exposition)

Edmund Schubert

David B Coe (aka D.B. Jackson)

AJ Hartley

Misty Massey

Stuart Jaffe

Faith Hunter (aka a lot of things)

C.E. Murphy

It's been a few hectic months of earthquakes, tornadoes, and moving house since I got the book at StellarCon, but eking out time to read it has not proved difficult. First of all, this book comes endorsed by Orson Scott Card himself, and you can just about hear the man's sigh of relief in the printed words - he's not alone in trying to teach the sea of would-be genre authors how to write!

With Edmund Schubert's forward about "price tags" in fiction and AJ Hartley's essay on High Concept leading off the pack, I knew within a few pages that I was going to need highlighters. Yes, it's a signed book. I even got a super-special copy with the title page printed upside-down (the only one!), which we deemed the "collecter's copy", and I'm pretty sure the smudge on the top is relic of one of Misty Massey's chocolate-chip cookies. And I highlighted it!?


Hell yes, I did.

Books about writing are plentiful. Writing advice - good or bad - is easy to find, and part of what makes this book so valuable to me is that Magical Words offers advice for writing genre fiction. That isn't to say every essay has to do with creating magic systems, effectively using genre tropes, and whether the Kessel run should take the Falcon eight or nine parsecs--far from it. Most of the essays deal with skills, techniques, and problems faced by writers of all genres: character creation, motivation, and development; world-building at all depths and levels; and all manner of best-practices applicable to writing fiction that doesn't suck. Especially the bits about it being okay to suck before you're any good.

What sets Magical Words apart from other books on writing, however, is the fact that nearly every essay goes back to practical application in genre fiction. From the worlds of Jane Yellowrock, Mad Kestrel, the Blood of the Southlands trilogy, and many others, the authors of Magical Words show us how they applied the lessons to their own fiction, or how they struggled to make the discoveries they now share. Everything goes back to applying writing techniques to genre fiction. Unlike the college writing professors who sneer at the mention of magic, or the more literary books on writing that simply don't mention other genres exist, Magical Words dives joyfully into the way these tools of the craft apply to speculative fiction, and how we can harness them like dark wizards harness the power of the innocents, bending them to our will to make greater the worlds over which we reign.

MWAHAHAhahahaa...ha...no? Fine. Bad analogy. I guess I'll have to go back and reread the essay on metaphors and similes.

Another bit about this book that I think is really great is that a good number of the comments from the original posts were lifted from the blog and printed after the essay as a sort of dialog. The discussions that arise in the comments are part of what makes the blog itself valuable, especially when one of the other authors expands, disagrees, or provides an alternate perspective on the topic. In the book, it does double duty by reinforcing the oft-cited claim: "there is no one right way". It also provides us aspiring writers a peek at the way we should be analyzing other writers' advice, which is an important skill as there is a lot of advice out there and a lot of it is conflicting.

Another benefits of reading about writing, for me anyway, is that it always inspires me to write. Something about those little "aha!" moments gives me the motivation to get over whatever hurdle I've set in my own way. The other day I was worrying about HELLHOUND and how I could make the tension more apparent, and a well-timed post on MW set me to thinking about Helena's desires, and whether any of them conflict with each other. Aha! There's that little missing screw that was holding up the entire machine. My main character's own conflicting desires should work directly against whatever is happening. If there's magic, the tension should come from her desire to escape that life and find her own humanity. If she's hanging out with her roommates, the tension should come from her desire to protect her pack and her friends, which she must do by learning the magic that makes her not belong. Those desires conflict with each other rather directly.

If you scroll back through my blog, you'll see a lot of my posts start with "So I was reading the Magical Words blog today, and..." There's a reason for that, my friends.

I encourage you to check out the Magical Words blog and add to the comments. I've never had a comment go unanswered, and part of what makes me love these guys is the fact that they give so much of their time to the readers of the blog. Now, you could sift through the years of posts and comments to find all the posts in the book, but I encourage you to buy the book. Highlight it. These guys write this blog pro bono, and a look at any one of these posts will show you how much work they put into bringing the wisdom-of-the-published to aspiring genre fiction writers like you and me.

Kids, this book is only $6 on Kindle. Shoo! Go! Purchase! You won't be sorry!

For a little taste of what the MW crew is like, check out this interview with Kalayna Price (the chick on the far right, who is often a guest-contributor to MW, and whose wardrobe rocks my face off), recorded last weekend at ConCarolinas! Yeah, I was moving that weekend, but I was there in spirit. Possibly the spirit of Edmund's shirt...

Other frequent guest contributors to the MW blog:

Carrie Ryan

Diana Pharaoh-Frances

Lucienne Diver
Mindy Klasky

INTERACT: Are you a MW reader? What blogs or books on writing have you found helpful? Does reading about writing inspire you to write? What inspires your "aha!" moments? Have you ever networked at a convention?

Character Flaws - Make them Matter

Character flaws: those deficiencies and limitations we're supposed to give our characters to make them more human and accessible. We know we need them to avoid writing the dreaded Mary Sue, whose only flaw isn't really a flaw, because it never gets her in trouble or changes the course of her story. Seriously, y'all: how am I supposed to believe that clumsiness is negative when its only consequence is tipping her in the arms of Edward Cullen her love-interest?


A few weeks ago, I wrote a post on interpreting conflicting advice in which I discussed a story I had written and how I used a beta-reader's suggestion to root out the real problem in the story. That problem wasn't that the main character didn't have flaws, but that the flaw didn't matter enough to the story for the reader to feel satisfied. It was only really in writing that post that I understood what I had done. Lest I accidentally claim to having more genius than I actually possess, let me assure you that I didn't "get" the connection of flaw to textual evidence of it until I wrote it down. 


Aspiring writers hear all the time that their characters need to have flaws. What we don't hear so often - which is perhaps more the point - is that those flaws have to matter. What's the point of giving your main character a lightning-bolt scar if it doesn't get him recognized when he doesn't want to be, or twinge and burn when he's taking OWLs? So, how do we make the flaws we give our characters matter?


We give them consequences.


The flash-bulbs are going off in my head like two starlets are cat-fighting on my brain's red-carpet. I knew this about flaws already...sort of. All the components were floating around in my head, waiting for me to connect them. (Raven could probably wax awesome here and make a metaphor about molecules and covalent bonds in reference to this kind of discovery, but I'd have to wiki that sucker, and then she'd sneeze on my science-metaphor and knock it off its unstable little legs.)


Epiphany-moment: I can't just give characters flaws for the sake of having them; I have to make their flaws have consequences! The realization found me scrambling through my manuscripts to make sure there was evidence of the flaws I knew my characters had. And, holey-plots, Batman - there are some places I will need to make repercussions, which opens up a lot of new exciting story possibilities. 


The best part about this connection was the realization that I could follow it backwards, rooting through the text for consequences to flaws I hadn't realized were there. 


I knew that Bay was a recalcitrant busybody, but I never realized his itinerant ways stemmed from their own insecurities, from the grudge he holds against the town he grew up in, and the teacher who left him behind. Who knew Arianna was so impulsive, so rebellious, and that her resistance to taking suggestions from anyone she considers beneath her would land her in so much trouble? And Helena - the Magic-weilding Hellhound - I couldn't believe how fast her self confidence vanished when she wasn't kicking bounty-hunter butt. Boy, does that kick her legs right out from under her in regard to her relationship with her roommates. Then there's Procne - deluding herself about her brother's death because she secretly fears being alone.


Srsly. I could be here a while.


Another bonus about flaws with consequences is that they help me with another topic I really struggle with: theme. I rarely start out writing with a theme in mind, and if one manages to emerge from the text, it's watery and unfocused. But if I consider my characters' flaws...


Mark of Flight: Wisdom is not defined by class or appearance.
Hellhound: Overcoming insecurities to find one's humanity.
Beggar's Twin: Acting out of the fear of loneliness ultimately hurts more people.


I can change these into sentences that reflect major themes in my work! "A princess discovers that wisdom is not defined by class or appearance"; "a non-human girl overcomes finds confidence in her own humanity"; "a young woman defeats her fear of loneliness and puts her brother's soul to rest."

Wow. So, apparently my issues in finding the theme of my story had to do with that un-established connection between a flaw, and how it matters to the story.


*cue hard rock hallelujah*


Giving your characters flaws is not enough - they have to somehow impede your character from reaching his or her goal. Even if it's not part of the main plot, it's got to matter enough to the story that the reader can sympathize with overcoming their own drawbacks, even if they're not the same. Because people sympathize best with characters who have accessible flaws, it's important to showcase them by giving consequences to that flaw.


 Does your character have a scar? Have it cause insecurity, and have that insecurity make her angry. Have that anger make her use excessive force to dispatch an iddybiddy-bad-guy and draw the big bad closer. Sometimes it's useful to look at the plot, and tease out a flaw that might already be there, like an archaeologist unearths the skeletons-in-the-closet of ancient kings. Considering last week's post on character journeys, you can probably tell that I really like this "going backwards" method.


Your characters' flaws have to matter, and to matter, they have to have consequences that affect a plot or sub-plot of the story by hampering your character. Whether it's feeling unworthy of the love-interest, or having a fear of heights that keeps him from becoming a dragon-rider, these flaws have to mean something to the story.


What kinds of flaws have you given your characters and how do they show up in your story? Do you think of flaws before you start, or do they rise from the text as you write? How have your own flaws held you back or gotten in your way?


Image by Jeremy Brooks